Argentina access to her primary markets, she could only aim at secondary ones, such as Spain and
Brazil. Grain sales to Brazil grew sevenfold from 1950 to 1953, yet this was not nearly enough to
compensate for the loss caused by the Marshall plan. From 1948 to 1952, Argentina’s share of the
world wheat market fell from 23% to only 9% and the share for corn from 64% to only 23.5%
(Rock 293). Trading with countries like Brazil and Spain could not possibly compensate for such a
loss because neither Spain nor Brazil could pay for these goods in dollars that Argentina needed so
badly. Therefore, the Third Position did improve Argentina’s relations with the rest of Latin
America but it did not do enough to solve Argentina’s economic problems. This lack of detail in
Argentina, a country study is to be expected though, because the book primarily focused on
providing the reader with a mere overview of Argentina.
The second part of the above mentioned statement concerning Argentina’s more distant
attitude toward the United States is simply not true. After 1949, Argentina offered great support
and moved a lot closer to the United States. In 1950, with the outbreak of the Korean War, Peron,
took an openly pro-US. position by declaring that Argentine troops would be a part of the United
Nations contingent (Vacs 15). Although Peron reversed his decision in light of the public opinion,
Argentine foodstuffs still aided Americans in the Korean War. Furthermore, professor of political
science at University of Birmingham H.S. Ferns, having worked in Argentina’s Centro de
Investigaciones Economicas, offers first-hand accounts of Argentina’s closer ties with the United
States. In August of 1953, Peron opened negotiations with the Standard Oil Company of
California. Soon enough, Peron opened petroleum extraction and industrial development in
engineering to foreign enterprise. From 1953 onwards American industrial firms began to take over
major sectors of Argentine industry, aided by Peron’s help, given in the form of tariff protection
(Ferns 199). In light of these facts, the Third Position really did not lead to Argentina’s more
distant attitude toward the United States.
In closing, it is uncommon for an able president to involve himself in philosophy. However,
it is not uncommon for an able president to convert a complex philosophy into a massive
propaganda tool. This is what Juan Peron essentially did with the Third Position. He converted a
dialectic on class conflicts into a simple policy that stood for capitalism, created an illusion that
Argentina was strong enough to defy the United States, and failed to improve Argentina’s economic
conditions. The final analysis, therefore, marks the Third Position as a failed attempt by President
Peron to improve Argentina’s economic conditions and at the same time restate Argentina’s
determination to run its own affairs by not committing to either United States nor the Soviet Union
during the Cold War.
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